


embracing the thorn

by dollsome



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 04:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Something screams in Cathy Earnshaw, Isabella knows – something you could reach in and touch, caress into sweetness or at least respite, if you only knew how to crook your fingers just so.</i> (Or: Isabella Linton is prone to unfortunate infatuations.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	embracing the thorn

**Author's Note:**

> My most recent Wuthering Heights reread left me full o' feelings about Isabella Linton, who fascinates me, and, well, it's also Femslash February. It couldn't be helped! (Or, well, it probably could have, but. Shhh.)

_She seemed almost over-fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn._  
(Wuthering Heights, Chapter X)  
  
  
  
  
It’s not hard to see why Edgar loves her so. Cathy Earnshaw is such a strange combination of parts, all lovely and wild. Isabella does not know many people, has not gone many places, but she  _knows_ she could wander a thousand miles and never find another pair of eyes like Cathy’s. Some bit of nature burns in them: they flash sometimes, sharp as ice in winter – the kind that has no qualms about breaking under your feet. Her gaze, when it is on you, feels like the wind when it moans across the moors in a storm. (They don’t care about you either, storms. They will tear you to bits without pause.) It’s not that Cathy isn’t a lady. She is as polite and graceful as anyone could imagine, when it suits her. But it doesn’t suit her, not deep into her soul, and Isabella knows it just to look at her. Something screams in Cathy Earnshaw, Isabella knows – something you could reach in and touch, caress into sweetness or at least respite, if you only knew how to crook your fingers just so.  
  
  
+  
  
  
Isabella doesn’t doubt that Cathy loves Edgar, in her way. Most of the time they are very happy together. Edgar gains a wife and Isabella gains a sister, and the three of them are more a family than they ever were with two. Isabella has never been unhappy, but she is not stupid either. She knows that being a Linton has always been tranquil business, gentle and bland. It didn’t bother her so much before.  
  
Edgar is affectionate by nature, and Cathy almost ravenously so. Isabella thinks it cannot be quite proper, the way Cathy kisses him, even if he is her husband. She kisses like a woman, not a girl still figuring things out.  
  
(And of course Isabella has heard of that wild boy, that gypsy playmate of Cathy’s. Sometimes she would spot them roaming outside together from a distance, looking like travelers, like twins, dark hair whipping gladly in the wind. They must have kissed – for who, out there, would have stopped them?)  
  
Sometimes she kisses Isabella. ‘I never imagined I’d have a sister,’ she will say, or a teasing remark like that, and she’ll press her lips to Isabella’s cheek. Her kisses are wetter, just slightly, than they ought to be. Isabella doesn’t mind it. Cathy will usually touch her face then with hands that feel a little coarse, as if dirt still hides in the lines of them. She keeps her fingernails very short. It’s easy to picture dirt in them. It’s easy to wonder about her fingertips. ‘After Frances, I mean,’ Cathy will add, an afterthought, as if it does not matter much.  
  
For Frances died. Something of death is always hanging around Cathy Earnshaw (Linton – it’s Linton now) – tugging at her skirts, begging her to love it too.  
  
  
+  
  
  
Cathy isn’t quiet in anything. Some nights, in the dark, Isabella will lie awake in her bed and listen guiltily, the boxsprings in the other bedroom as persistent as a branch on a windowpane. The sound is punctured by Cathy’s pants and cries. They never turn into words, Cathy’s noises: words could never be worthy of her heat. She wonders how her brother can even stand it, keeping her so close. Isabella thinks she would die.  
  
Edgar stays quiet. Maybe it would bother her more if he didn’t. Sometimes Isabella forgets that her brother has anything to do with Cathy at all. It is easier to believe, somehow, that she is alone in there, thrashing and ecstatic, too brilliant to be pleased by anyone but her own soul.  
  
  
+  
  
  
And then there are her rages. They don’t happen often, but when they do, it’s enough to threaten to topple Thrushcross Grange altogether. Edgar would do anything to keep them at bay, but nature is nature. There’s no sense trying to quell a storm.  
  
Isabella stands outside the drawing room and listens.  
  
‘You think I’m happy here?’  
  
‘Catherine—’  
  
‘No. You listen. I want you to listen to me. Do you really think I could be happy here, with you? Day after day, nothing ever changes, not ever; is this all you think I’m good for? Sitting here in a room, all pretty and stupid? I used to have the world at my feet, when—’ (She isn’t a fool, and so she never speaks his name.) ‘You may be a coward, my sweet husband, but I don’t fear the world like you do. I’d be glad to leave all this behind – but you’ll never go anywhere, will you? Well, I’d go myself. I’d be glad to do it. I’d escape you in an instant if I could.’  
  
‘I wasn’t aware I’d trapped you.’ Poor Edgar. Isabella wishes it were easier to keep her heart loyal to him.  
  
‘You idiot. Why else would I stay?’  
  
‘Fondness for me. For Isabella. You know we both love you dearly.’  
  
‘I don’t give a damn for your love! What use is it to me?’  
  
‘You’re not yourself.’  
  
‘Oh! And you know that? Is that it?’  
  
‘Who knows you better than I do?’ (How tentative her brother sounds, as if even he knows it is a lie of a question.)  
  
‘I hate you!’ Her shrieks are so like her bedroom cries, but harder to stomach in the daylight. There is the sound of a good hard slap; in its wake come her hoarse, angry sobs.  
  
‘Catherine, Catherine, shhh, shhh, shhh—’  
  
‘Get off of me! Get off or I’ll kill you – I swear I’ll kill you, I swear it—’  
  
Isabella chances to peer through the narrow crack of the open door. Edgar has his arms around Cathy, his chin resting atop her dark head. She thrashes against him; fierce at first, before the fight goes out of her. It’s always hard to remember that her health is delicate. You’d think she was the strongest of the three of them, to look at her.  
  
There’s a hand on Isabella’s shoulder, and her heart nearly stops. It’s all she can do not to cry out as she whirls around.  
  
‘Never you mind, Miss Isabella.’ It’s Nelly Dean. Her face has the peculiar hardness Cathy tends to put on it. ‘She’s a spoiled child. That’s all. It will pass.’  
  
The nerve of the woman.  
  
‘She’s not a child,’ Isabella says, pleased at the archness of her own voice. She had not planned it. ‘And it sounds like her heart is fit to burst.’  
  
‘Perhaps it should. And we’d get a day’s peace at last, hmm?’  
  
‘That’s not funny.’  
  
Nelly doesn’t apologize, though she should. Isabella has always thought her strange for a servant. Her eyes are too sharp.  
  
At last she nods and leaves the room, off to tend to her mistress.  
  
I don’t want a day’s peace, Isabella wants to shout after her. (Would shout, if she were as brave as Cathy.) I want her fire. I want her blood in my veins.  
  
  
+  
  
  
Then Cathy is so kind sometimes that it nearly breaks Isabella’s heart.  
  
On rainy afternoons, for instance. Cathy doesn’t have much patience with reading, but Isabella does, so Cathy lets Isabella rest her head in her lap. Her fingers wander idly through Isabella’s hair, while Isabella reminds herself to turn the pages.  
  
‘You probably never want more than what you’ve got already, do you, my darling?’ Cathy’s voice is far away. Off on the moors. Clutching a ghost’s hand.  
  
‘Everyone wants something,’ Isabella answers. The words in front of her have turned to hieroglyphics.  
  
‘Hmm,’ Cathy says, unconvinced.  
  
Sometimes it seems like Cathy doesn’t believe that anyone else exists to the heights that she does. Isabella yearns to tell her sometimes – that she feels too, that Cathy isn’t the only one caged by this house. That if Cathy ever chose to run, Isabella would steal away with her, and gladly.  
  
But Lintons have always kept quiet, and Isabella knows better than to imagine herself an exception.  
  
She closes her eyes. Cathy’s hands stay in her hair.  
  
  
+  
  
  
And then the boy comes back, and he is a man called Heathcliff.  
  
He isn’t handsome, not really, but he is tall and dark; he burns the same way Cathy does. At his return, Cathy nearly goes mad with joy. Isabella has never wanted to be a man, never once in her life, until she watches Cathy beam across the table at Mr. Heathcliff.  
  
He throws a disinterested glance her way once. Pauses at whatever he must see. He has the darkest eyes she’s ever seen; some bit of Cathy haunts them, for Isabella can recognize it at once. It is the strangest and most remarkable feeling to see Cathy looking out at her from this brute stranger’s eyes.  
  
How deep into him has she gone? Are his fingertips like hers, vaguely rough but all the sweeter for it? Would he kiss like her, careless and warm and wet? Perhaps he might. The years did nothing to pull her out of him. And if he is still full of her – this stranger, this ruffian, with nothing to recommend him (despite how adequately he passes for a gentleman now) – then surely there is hope for a girl of good breeding, once she’s set her mind on adventure.  
  
He tilts his head slightly, a mean smirk on his lips. She smiles back, the first womanly smile she has ever bestowed on a man. He snorts to himself. Then he returns his attention to beloved Cathy. She has been waiting for him.  
  
  
+  
  
  
‘Mr. Heathcliff is very handsome,’ Isabella mentions coyly that night. She has read enough to know how girls ought to begin flirtations. They are in her bedroom, both in their nightdresses, and Cathy is weaving Isabella’s hair into a plait. Isabella will braid Cathy’s next. She keeps her hands folded demurely in her lap.  
  
‘Oh, Isabella,’ Cathy says, tensing. ‘Don’t be a fool.’  
  
She abandons braiding and dances her fingers over to Isabella’s neck. When they are there she digs her short nails in, hard. (A silly girl might weep, might think her cruel, but Heathcliff could withstand such things, and if Heathcliff could—)  
  
Isabella gasps.  
  
Cathy laughs, pleased that it stung.


End file.
